


Boundaries

by Vrunka



Category: Overwatch (Video Game)
Genre: Angst, F/F, Masturbation, Overwatch Femslash exchange, Pining
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-07
Updated: 2017-05-07
Packaged: 2018-10-28 17:18:52
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,072
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10835784
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Vrunka/pseuds/Vrunka
Summary: She isn't sure what to expect when she rounds the corner into the small kitchen.But it certainly isn't a ghost.And that is exactly what she gets.Ana Amari, laughing, smiling, stirring tea as she leans back on the counter. Ana Amari in the flesh like it is six years ago and she isn't dead and none of the horrible, terrible things that happened happened.





	Boundaries

**Author's Note:**

> Called in as a pinch hitter for the Overwatch femslash exchange and let me tell you. I think this is the fastest I've ever written. Hattersarts requested Ana/Mercy reunion and it was like fire took over my fingers.
> 
> So this is for you! Hope you enjoy!!

She knows there's something off the minute the helicopter touches down at Watchpoint: Gibraltar. Angela fixes her bulky pack on her hip and glances around.

In the early days of Overwatch someone would have always been here to greet her. But now there is no one.

She leans forward and works her way across the campus. Wind from the helicopter whips through her hair, drags it out of place and across her forehead. She waves to the pilot as she reaches the first building. Her nails are chipped. The one habit she has yet to break; ridiculous to feel nervous flying when she literally uses Valkyrie on a regular basis but the fact remains.

She picks idly at the uneven tip. Rubs the pad of her thumb against it.

She looks around again.

There is no way that she is the first one back. She isn't even sure reforming Overwatch is the wholly correct thing to be doing and she dallied for an entire three days before heading out. But she is here because Winston asked, because seeing Lena on the news had done her heart good.

Angela turns in a slow circle, adjusts her bag once more and heads for the closest briefing room. She hears the noise before she gets there.

The rumble of voices echoing against the walls.

Angela follows the sounds.

She isn't sure what to expect when she rounds the corner into the small kitchen.

But it certainly isn't a ghost.

And that is exactly what she gets.

Ana Amari, laughing, smiling, stirring tea as she leans back on the counter. Ana Amari in the flesh like it is six years ago and she isn't dead and none of the horrible, terrible things that happened happened.

She looks up as Angela enters the room. Her hair is white now, tucked gracefully over her shoulder in a braid. Her thin, delicate fingers circle the edge of the tea cup.

Angela's feel dead at her sides. The nerves gone offline. Her fingers twitch.

"Oh," Ana says, her voice is huskier than Angela remembers. Years and distance have aged her. "Angela."

That's the greeting, after all these years.

Oh.

Angela.

And a small smile.

The spoon clinks against the china and Angela is having trouble finding her voice. Her breathing has gone off rhythm. Her pulse spikes.

"I thought we weren't expecting more company, Winston," Ana says. She sips her tea. Angela wonders if if it's still chamomile, judging from the eyepatch, it doesn't seem to be working if it is.

"Well, have a seat, dear," Ana says and suddenly Winston's hands are at Angela's back, gently guiding her toward a chair. "It has been a while I suppose."

"You suppose?" Angela asks. Her voice is like a scab, raw and sore. She looks away. Winston touches her shoulder.

"It was a shock for me too," he says.

It's more than a just a shock.

Angela thinks of Gabriel. Of what she did to Gabriel, so determined not to have another Ana on Overwatch's hands. Not to lose another hero.

"I...I thought about writing and when I heard the recall well...it seemed the right time." She smiles. Her remaining eye crinkles as bright and sharp as Angela remembers. "I wasn't cut out for retirement anyway."

The longing Angela had long written off as as dead and buried as the woman in question rolls over in her gut.

Ah, memories.

Ah, Overwatch.

"You...didn't tell anybody," Angela asks, disbelieving. "Surely Fareeha must--"

Beside her, Winston stiffens. Ana looks away.

"How did you survive," Angela asks instead, changing tact. Pleading seeping into the edges of her tone. "Where have you been for all these years?"

Ana makes a gesture, a flip-flop of her hand. "Here and there. Tracking what I can. Overwatch still has work to do. I like to think I have helped some with the leg work."

"Talon bases," Winston says, nodding, "numbers, locations, resources. It's amazing really. Recon that could have taken us months to gather."

Recon and information.

Forget the daughter she abandoned.

The people who looked up to her.

Angela's hands curl on the table. Her uneven fingernails press into her palm.

Ana places a teacup in front of her. The same rose-decorated china. The liquid is golden within.

"Drink," Ana says. "Take it slow. It's good for the nerves," Ana says, "for the blood pressure."

It takes everything in Angela not to throw the cup back in her face.

\---

"You aren't happy to see me, then," Ana says.

Hours later and Angela's ride in is ignoring her calls. She is stranded here until...well until someone answers. She won't ask Winston for use of any of the jets, he has too much to do. Too much planning.

Others are on the way.

If Fareeha is among them, Winston has not said.

Angela turns on her side. She's found her old bunk. Barely used. She was always too busy here to sleep. Repairs for Genji, tests for the Caduceus staff. Angela sits up. The blanket pools about her waist.

Ana is at the door.

Her eye flicks to Angela's uncovered shoulders, follows the line of her neck.

"My," Ana says, quietly, a little out of touch, her fingers brushing against her own neck. "You've barely aged a day."

Angela bites her lips. There was a time she would have given anything to hear Ana sound like that in reference to her. Now, the feeling still sparks, muddled and low in her stomach, and Angela does not know what to do about it.

"Can't say the same, I'm afraid," she says. She knows how it sounds but Ana does not flinch.

She tips her head in agreement. "Years in hiding do that to a person. May I come in, I would like to...to talk to you."

Mercy moves her hands, she scoots to the edge of the bunk. She has left her gear on the bed below her, not expecting or particularly welcoming the company, but Ana's gesture stops her before she can hop to the floor to move it.

She pulls the chair from under the desk instead.

"Still researching nanobiotics?"

"Still using my technology as a weapon?"

This time Ana does flinch, her shoulders curl inward. An old wound, on this they will never see eye to eye.

Eye.

"What happened," Angela asks. She touches her own cheek. She has evened out the nails.

"Probably not much different than what you were told. A job went bad. There was someone that I..." Ana shakes her head. She touches the eyepatch, pushes her bangs to hang over it better. Not hidden, but vain, Angela remembers these things.

"I didn't take the shot and they did." She swallows.

Angela lowers herself to the floor. The linoleum is cold beneath her feet. She crosses to the desk. Back in time, a lifetime ago, this would have felt like crossing the invisible line. This would have been the point of no return.

Angela was young then.

Angela was so, so in love then.

"May I?" she asks now, holding her hand out, palm up. Her tank top strap slips down her arm, it takes her just a second too long to fix it. Ana's gaze switches between Angela's hand and that offending strap.

And then it closes and she half-smiles. "Of course, my dear," she says.

"What else happened," Angela asks, for something to say; an ease of this mounting tension. Her fingers touch Ana's forehead, her cheek. Her skin is warm and soft.

Ana's eye remains firmly shut.

But her eyebrow raises. "Happened when?"

"When your were...gone."

"Many of my friends died," Ana says. Angela's finger slips under the barrier of the eyepatch. But she doesn't pull up, she can't. She can barely breath. "We were all old soldiers, it was bound to happen eventually."

Angela thinks of Gabriel's hand raising from the ichor. His flesh being eaten from the bone, being rewritten new and wrong and monstrous.

Her fingers twitch.

Ana smiles. "You don't have to look," she says.

"It's fine. I miss them," Angela says. "I missed you."

"I know you did, dear. You have a good heart. A bleeding heart, but a good one."

Angela tugs the eyepatch up and away before Ana can say anymore. Much like kitchen earlier, she isn't sure what exactly she imagined she would find under there, some bloody, bare mess.

But it's nothing of the sort.

The lid was saved, mostly. Dropping over the socket that is dark and looming and clearly empty. Like the end of a scope, like looking down a rifle. The darkness twitches and Angela realizes there is a fake in there, probably glass, but all consuming blackness all the same.

"They couldn't save it?"

"I didn't ask. I woke up and it was gone. I have found my way around it. The offered to graft the skin further, but..."

It would have scarred her chin, or her cheek to do that. Angela is not surprised she would have refused.

"The wound was clean?"

"As clean as these things can get. She was a good shot, I wish I had known that before..." Ana falls silent again.

Her hands lift.

One touches Angela's wrist, one fixes the patch back over her eye. Only once it is in place does she allow the good one to open.

Her fingers, birdlike, cool, never let go of Angela's wrist.

"So tell me of you," Ana says. "And your travels." Her hands fold over Angela's. Tracing the knuckles.

Angela does not know what to say.

"You were in the Middle East were you not? I heard of an angel her wings of blue and gold. You have perfected the Valkyrie?"

"I suppose."

The word perfected hits a place Angela has long since forgotten. The electric shock of Ana's praise down her spine. But she isn't seventeen anymore and the whole concept of a crush is absolutely unfathomable.

"You suppose," Ana teases, warm and fond. Her hand squeezes. Her fingers slide between Angela's. "There was a time when you were younger when you could not stop talking about your achievements. Everyday a new miracle you had performed. And now reluctance to share. You have grown older on me."

"I am just...not a little kid anymore."

Ana smiles. Slowly she raises a hand, touches Angela's chin. Her thumb slides against Angela's lower lip, so softly it could be an accident. Probably is an accident.

"Oh, my dear," she says. "You have never really been a little kid. You have always been special. A genius."

"Stop condescending," Angela says. Sharper than she means to. She is still mad, enraged.

Ana left them.

For years Ana left them.

"I can fix your eye," Angela says. "There are procedures for it. To repair it."

Ana's smile turns just a little tighter. The edges folding inward. This time when her fingers brush over Angela's lips, it is harder to think of it as an accident.

"You are very kind," she says. Releasing Angela's hands, Angela's face. She stands, brushes off her coat. Imaginary dust. "But I am comfortable with who I am now. It's a good reminder."

"Of how you left us?"

"Yes. Of mistakes that cannot be taken back. More than just...perceived abandonment. There are some things in this life, Angela, that can never, never be changed."

Gabriel's arm, the straining, disintegrating tendrils of him.

Screaming.

Angela shudders.

Behind in the hall, Ana doesn't even look back. 

\--

That night, for the first time in five years, Angela finds herself once more indulging in a fantasy she had thought dead.

Another boundary shattered.

She moves her fingers in a tight little circle against her clitoris, heaving a sigh. Thinking of Ana.

This Ana.

Now Ana.

The one with white hair and that same biting smile.

And one eye.

Gabriel's darkness spills out of the other. And it's sick, it's horrifying, but the eddying thought of being devoured by that reckoning has Angela's knees locking.

Her spine arches.

Her chest heaves.

Heat spills around her fingers, floods up from her belly.

And then it is gone.

Over.

And she feels as empty as she had before she started. Hardly sated. Hardly boneless or relaxed. She slips her fingers free and rubs them against each other.

Her nails catch.

Uneven.

She doesn't know when that could have happened.

\--

"What do you mean gone?" Angela asks.

Morning of the next day.

Winston's big shoulders shift in a shrug. He's holding a jar of peanut butter in one hand, they're going to have to address that sooner or later.

"Uhh. I don't know. Maybe. Less than an hour ago. You were still asleep and I told her who had checked in as on route and she--" Winston interrupts himself to scoop a finger full into his mouth. He hums around it, thinking. Swallows.

"She said she could run more recon, that maybe it would be better if not everyone knew she was back yet."

"And you let her go?"

Winston rolls his shoulders again. The motion is so oddly human in his simian form. "It's not like the old days," he says. "We can't run things like that anymore. Bureaucratic. It's something I wanted to talk to you about in fact, Doctor. The old Overwatch was--"

Angela has tuned out.

Her mind skips over what he has said so far.

The people coming in. Coming home.

"Fareeha?" she asks, interrupting him. "Was she one of the ones, coming in, checking in."

Winston seems to consider. It takes an unbelievable amount of time for his genetically, brilliantly enhanced brain to offer a sort of shy: "No?"

Not that then.

Not running this time.

"Under hour," she says.

"Yes but--"

"Which direction?"

"North but--"

But Angela is already off and running.

A pit stop to her room is all it takes and she is ready. Slipping on Valkyrie is like stepping into a second skin. One where she is the goodness that everyone perceives in her. One where mistakes like Gabriel Reyes never happened.

She heads north, rushing from the building. She sees Winston, exiting to the helipad as she goes.

She does not offer him a wave.

She isn't even entirely sure that he sees her.

Ana has almost an hour head start and presumably a destination. Angela doesn't really have time to waste on pleasantries.

\--

It takes two hours but eventually, somehow, Angela catches up. She catches a glimpse of blue on the horizon. A figure, moving across the orange of the landscape. It doesn't take long after that to close the distance.

"Took you long enough, my dear," Ana offers by way of greeting as Angela touches down near her some twenty minutes later.

"You knew I would follow?"

"I had a feeling. I didn't think I would get out of all the answers so easily."

"What?"

"You're persistent. And you're good hearted. You want to know where I am going. I am not running from Fareeha, if that was your fear. She has apparently not checked in yet."

Angela swallows. She can't help but smile. "It was my first thought, actually, but Winston told me as much as well. You really never told her?"

Ana's good eye tightens. Squinting into the light. The two of them begin to walk, drift. It feels aimless. Ana adjusts the rifle on her shoulder.

"I wrote her a letter."

"When?"

A hand wave, a curling sort of circle. "Not long ago. A month perhaps. I never sent it. It didn't seem right to."

It wouldn't.

A letter is not enough.

Seeing her here and in person is almost not enough.

"She would get the letter," Ana continues. "And then what? Drop everything? Come for searching for me?"

"Or nothing."

Ana tips her head. "Or that. It wouldn't be fair to her, doing it that way. She is...nearly as determined as you. Stubborn some would say but, that, from me, is probably not a fair assessment."

"Probably not."

The terrain has turned rocky. Ana scrambles up a few steps, turns and offers Angela a hand. With Valkyrie it would take nothing to keep up, but Angela allows the help anyway. Indulges the feeling of Ana's hand in her own.

"So where are you going then?"

"Me? I thought at this point it was obvious we were going together."

The words make Angela blush. Heat across the bridge of her nose, prickling in her cheeks.

Together.

It's all she had ever wanted when she was younger. To be relied on by Ana. Now though.

Now.

"There is someone I need to fetch," Ana says. Another rock, large and imposing, Ana pauses to pull herself up it. Her feet scrape against it. This time Angela uses the Valkyrie, she lands lightly at Ana's side.

"I am not the only one still alive," Ana says.

Angela thinks of Gabriel.

She closes her eyes.

"Oh?" she asks. Her throat feels tight. Closing up on her.

Ana touches her wrist. "Jack didn't die in the explosion," she says.

Jack.

Jack?

Angela's eyes open. Her breath catches again. Higher in her throat this time. Constricting behind her ribs.

"What?"

Ana shrugs. She smiles. "I don't exactly know how he survived, but...Jack Morrison is not dead. Of course you know as well as I what a stubborn bastard he can be. There is still work to be done. The least he can do is help us clean up the mess."

Angela's fingers brush against Ana's. Gloved, separated. Ana looks down to where they are touching. "So will you come with me," she asks. "It is a far trip but...I could use the company."

The company. Come with me.

The girl Angela was, the hopeful, bright, brilliant doctor has only ever wanted to hear this. The woman Angela is now cannot help the echoes of those feelings.

She still loves this woman.

Her first love.

Maybe her only.

No one else has ever come close.

And now, Ana is asking for her help.

Angela licks her lips. Her hand shifts, fingers interlacing fully with Ana's this time. "Yes," she says. "Of course I'll come with you. I've..."

Never wanted anything more.

She doesn't say it.

Ana's fingers squeeze her own. She does not pull her hand away. And Angela thinks, maybe, in her own way, Ana already knows.

Ana maybe always has.


End file.
